198 TO LAKE NAIVASHA [ch. ix 
bucks will do battle the minute the herd has stopped 
running from the foe that has seized one of its number, 
and a buck will cover a doe in the brief interval between 
the first and the second alarm, from hunter or lion. 
Zebra will make much noise when one of their number 
has been killed; but their fright has vanished when 
once they begin their barking calls. 
Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation 
—these are the normal endings of the stately and 
beautiful creatures of the wilderness. The senti¬ 
mentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature 
do not realize its utter mercilessness ; although all they 
would have to do would be to look at the birds in the 
winter woods, or even at the insects on a cold morning 
or cold evening. Life is hard and cruel for all the 
lower creatures, and for man also in what the senti¬ 
mentalists call a 44 state of nature.” The savage of 
to-day shows us what the fancied age of gold of our 
ancestors was really like ; it was an age when hunger, 
cold, violence, and iron cruelty were the ordinary 
accompaniments of life. If Matthew Arnold, when he 
expressed the wish to know the thoughts of Earth’s 
44 vigorous, primitive ” tribes of the past, had really 
desired an answer to his question, he would have done 
well to visit the homes of the existing representatives of 
his 44 vigorous, primitive ” ancestors, and to watch them 
feasting on blood and guts ; while as for the 44 pellucid 
and pure ” feelings of his imaginary primitive maiden, 
they were those of any meek, cowlike creature who 
accepted marriage by purchase or of convenience, as a 
matter of course. 
It was to me a perpetual source of wonderment to 
notice the difference in the behaviour of different 
individuals of the same species, and in the behaviour of 
